


Please Don't be a Dream

by HannahBoBannah



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 23:36:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5394470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannahBoBannah/pseuds/HannahBoBannah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They wanted him to remember her as the beautiful and loving woman she was; they didn’t want him to see what she’d become every time he closed his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please Don't be a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first B99 fic, and my first ever on this site (I have an old fanfiction.net account) so constructive criticism is welcome. Please, enjoy.

It had been a week since he lost her. She’d perished in the line of duty, side by side with Rosa who had become responsible for identifying the body. As her boyfriend Jake had believed that if her parents couldn’t be there than he should have been the one to ensure it was actually his Amy that had been killed. But Holt had claimed that her fatal injuries had been too gruesome and neither he nor Rosa had wanted Jake to remember her with her head blown off, and face only partially recognisable. They wanted him to remember her as the beautiful and loving woman she was; they didn’t want him to see what she’d become every time he closed his eyes. 

It was the morning of her funeral and Jake was sat at Amy’s desk in the precinct. He’d found that it was much harder to be in the apartment they shared than it was to be at the precinct. It was a place of stability and memories, a place that she had always been. Part of him believed that if he waited there long enough she would come back and everything would be okay, but as the funeral loomed ahead of him, the hours ticking by, he knew that there would be iron clad evidence that she was gone. They wouldn’t go to so much trouble if she wasn’t after all. 

Boyle had rolled his chair across the room and sat with Jake. He’d bought them both Amy’s favourite breakfast and set it up on her desk. At first the squad had believed this to be a great idea, but the moment it was all laid out in front of Jake he picked it up just to dump the food into the trash. No one made anymore peace offerings after this.  
The remainder of the morning slowly moved by as Jake sat in silence at her desk, everyone else working reluctantly around him. He didn’t move once and no one expected him to. Holt had given him the week off work but he had shown up every day and sat at her desk, fiddling with the knick knacks that had begun appearing once they were dating. He’d bought her the first one, a police car ornament that sat beside her computer and after this he would bring her something new every week. She allowed them all to pile up until she was no longer there to accept them anymore. The very last he had bought was still in his messenger bag, forgotten and left behind. 

“Jake, we’ve got to go. The funeral starts soon” Rosa had deadpanned. Her arms were crossed and he wondered why she was so calm. Everyone else had allowed themselves to cry and breakdown, but Rosa was still yet to show sadness. It was especially strange to him considering Amy and Rosa had developed quite a strong friendship over time; the two women would often spend evenings together, talking and going out with Gina. Her calmness just didn’t make sense. 

Choosing not to question her grief, Jake stood and followed her to the elevator where Boyle, Gina and Terry were also waiting. Everyone was dressed in their formal uniforms, and for once Gina had dressed down in an attempt to not stand out. After the doors slid open, they all remained silent, no one knowing what to say as they drove to the church that Amy’s family attended. While she never flaunted her religion, Jake knew she took it seriously and wouldn’t have had it any other way.

He’d greeted her parents and brothers instantly, abandoning the squad in order to fall into her mother’s open arms. Having met her family many times Jake was no stranger to the Santiago clan. They knew he loved Amy and she loved him, but above that he was a good person and the Santiago family valued good people. However, at the time of her death Jacqueline and Rudy had pushed him away, refusing to answer his calls and sending him to voicemail. They had completely blocked him out of the funeral planning process and only opened their arms to him in that moment. While Jake understood that her family would want time alone to grieve, he hated the idea that he was excluded from the decision process given that she was important to him and he loved her more than anything.

“Oh Jakey, how are you feeling?” Jacqueline had asked. Her hands rubbed soothing circles into his back as she held onto him tighter. She wore the same perfume as Amy; the smell was so familiar, it was so her and it made him remember. The smell reminded him of the woman he had lost, the love he had lost, and he cried. It was his first and only reaction; however, it caused her parents to become distant yet again.

“Well, we better go sit with our boys. The funeral will be starting soon.” Rudy had intervened, taking his wife’s arm in his own. The pair quickly moved to where Amy’s brothers sat with their partners and children, leaving Jake to stand by himself, still crying. Her youngest brother Nicholas was the only person to dare look at him with sympathy.  
Deciding to ignore their actions Jake took a seat close to the front where her best friend Kylie sat along with the squad. They were all silent, their heads down as they waited for the funeral to commence; it wasn’t until Jake who was the last one standing had taken his seat that they began and time flew by in an instant. 

Her father gave her eulogy. He’d talked about her life and how she had always been a funny little girl. Stories that Jake had heard over family dinners were shared and people laughed, but part of Jake didn’t feel like the man’s words were sincere. There were no tears, no sadness. He was completely numb. This wouldn’t have been so strange to him had the remainder of her family shown sadness, but instead they all sat with their heads down in what appeared to be an attempt at being unnoticed. 

At the end of her funeral six of her brothers, not including Sebastian who had broken his arm in the line of duty not too long ago, acted as pallbearers and carried her suspiciously light casket out of the church. Their lack of emotion mixed with their ease created confusion for Jake who had done the same job for his grandfather’s funeral and had found the coffin to be quite heavy. Rosa, however, had justified their ease by reminding him that Amy was very light and weighed nowhere near what his grandfather would. While he found solace in the explanation, their expressionless faces told him that there was something wrong with the situation.  
***  
They’d planned for her wake to take place at Shaw’s Bar and Jake wanted more than anything to find out why Amy’s family seemingly didn’t care about her death. But they hadn’t showed and Holt was the one to explain that they wished to grieve in private; this he couldn’t argue. However, due to their absence the pressure of giving a speech was placed on him. Without much time to prepare, Jake had decided to simply talk from the heart and say the things he wished he could have said if they had more time.

“Amy was my forever person. We were supposed to be together infinitely, but I guess life doesn’t always work out the way you plan.” Silence enveloped the room. Everyone’s eyes were on him as he stood behind the microphone; memories of his first speech for Amy at Captain Dozermen’s wake crossed his mind. At that time he had never expected to lose her so soon, he’d never expected to give his own eulogy for her at such a young age when their life together had only just begun. “No one ever tells you that there just isn’t enough time. We waste all of our minutes on unimportant, miniscule things when what we should be doing is cherishing what’s important to us. I know that I’ve always taken time for granted, that I’ve never really had a plan. That’s just how I’ve always been, living in the moment. But Amy changed this. She made me live for not only the now but also the future. She was the type of woman to plan like crazy for every situation and she was always so smart. I’m sure everyone here knows just how wonderful she was.”

Everyone smiled in response, continuing to watch as Jake found his words. When he was first asked to speak Jake had expected to struggle finding the right things to say. While she was the most important person in his life, this didn’t make it any easier. Their relationship was built upon their friendship that had often consisted of them joking at each other’s expense, and Jake knew that joking in this moment was a terrible idea. But he also knew that he loved her and so did everyone else in her life, so simply talking about her was what he needed to do.

“I think I know better than anyone that she wasn’t entirely perfect, that she had her flaws just like the rest of us. Amy had her problems with anxiety and she never felt that she was good enough; to be honest she could sometimes be a little bit boring. But she was our problematic, boring Amy. She was perfect just the way she was and that is why we all loved her. But we also loved her for her growth, for her ability to push past this anxiety. Nothing made me prouder of her than the moment she realised that she was good enough, that she had never been any less than the rest of us. I was proud of her for standing up for herself against our Captain and myself, for doing what she had to in order to remind us that she wasn’t just a sidekick, that she was Amy Freaking Santiago and she was capable of so much. Not only was she an amazing detective slash genius, she was Queen on the Nine-Nine. Amy was ours and we were hers. She was loved, she still is loved, and I will always love her.” He held up his glass, trying to put on a smile as he looked to the large photo of Amy beside him. “Amy, you will always be the Orangina”

Rosa and Holt were gone by the time he was done. Boyle was wrapping him up in a hug, telling him that his speech was beautiful and he was certain Amy would have been proud, but Jake’s mind was racing as he wondered where the pair had gone. While he knew that it was in his best interest to stay, Jake also knew that something was going on and he had to get to the bottom of it.  
***  
He’d decided to investigate her death. Rosa was the only witness and the man who killed her had never been found. It was odd to him that Rosa hadn’t chased him down the moment Amy fell to the ground, that Rosa hadn’t caught the man responsible for Amy’s death when she had the chance. But even odder was the fact that they didn’t have a strong lead. Captain Holt and Rosa had claimed that the stress of the situation affected her memory, rendering her useless in their hunt for Amy’s killer. This was why her case was dismissed before it even had the chance to begin. But Jake wasn’t content with this, and if no one else would find justice for her than he sure as hell would.

“Rosa, what was the last case you and Amy were working?” Jake asked, slowly approaching Rosa’s desk as he read through a case file. It had been two weeks since the funeral and Holt had accepted the fact that Jake refused any more time off work, allowing him access to all the resources he would need to investigate her case.

“Why?” Her stone cold stare made him feel two inches tall but Jake had to persist. He needed to know what they were working on in order to begin his investigation as Amy had been shot while out on a call.

“I’m making a collection of scrapbooks of all the cases she worked with this squad. There’s an edition for everyone that I’ll let you all keep once I’m done.” This was a lie. But Amy had always been crafty and her favourite thing to do was scrapbook, so it wouldn’t be strange to the squad if the very last thing he did in honour of Amy was create a number of scrapbooks for them all. 

“Okay…” she paused for a moment, seemingly debating whether or not to tell him. “It was the Abbey Court Murders. The case hasn’t been solved though and our report hasn’t been filed so I wouldn’t count it. The last case we closed was a B and E. I’ll find the file and leave it on your desk later tonight.”  
While a case file on their B and E was nowhere near what he wanted, Jake at least knew that Amy’s death had come as a result of the Abbey Court Murders. With this knowledge, he knew that he had to get his hands on those records and the only way to do it was to hack Rosa’s computer.  
***  
He’d waited until everyone had gone home before approaching her desk. There was a fear in his heart that told him to stop; it told him that Rosa would kill him if she discovered what he’d done, but he needed to do it for Amy, and if Rosa did happen to kill him in the process then that couldn’t be too bad considering he’d get to be with Amy again. With this in mind, Jake continued on his mission that was surprisingly made easy by Rosa’s simple password. 

“Bingo” Jake had smirked as he simply located the file and printed everything he needed. As he logged out and rose from his seat, preparing to cross the room and collect what he had printed, his eyes couldn’t help but wander to Amy’s desk. It had been a month since she had sat in that chair, since she had typed on that computer, since she’d sipped coffee from that mug. It had been a month since she had laughed at his jokes, since she’d watch him with that beautiful smile on her lips, since she’d spoken his name. All he had left to hear her voice was an old voice mail. She was reminding him to pick up some groceries so that they didn’t have to eat take out that night. He remembered laughing at this the first time he hear it as neither of them could cook anyway. They had called Charles and Genevieve and asked if they wanted to come over for dinner, resulting in Charles taking over and cooking for them; this was something they always did when they wanted a nutritious and delicious meal, and Charles never let them down.

“Why did you have to leave me?” he asked in a soft whisper. While she hadn’t been there to accept any more of his ornaments and knick knacks it had become part of his morning routine to place something new on her desk every day, contributing to the clutter that he’d begun creating months prior. It wasn’t until two weeks ago that he noticed that everyone else was doing it too, but with their own form of offerings, whether it was flowers or photos. Her desk had become somewhat of a memorial that no one talked about but always noticed. And this made Jake smile, because she wasn’t forgotten and she was always there with them.  
***  
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” Jake yelled furiously, shoving Holt back as hard as he could. The Captain stumbled slightly before regaining his balance, watching on as Jack protected Amy’s desk with his body. It hurt Jake’s heart to know that the man Amy had always admired would so easily remove the last trace of her from the precinct. Half of her ornaments and flowers were in a box on the ground when he arrived at work that morning; Charles and Gina had surprisingly been hugging as they watched Rosa and Terry hesitantly clear the items from her desk. It was, however, Jakes immediate fit of rage that stopped them and not the clear sadness and tears of their colleagues. 

“I’m sorry Jake, but we have to. Wunch has told us that we need to clear the desk in order to have a space for any new transfers. This isn’t what any of us want, but we have to obey orders.” It was clear to him that they were all upset about it, but he still couldn’t believe that Holt would put Wunch’s orders before his own squad’s feelings. Amy was one of them and Holt was removing the very last of her without even consulting him or thinking about how this would affect the squad as a whole. Her loss was unexpected and it hurt, it made them all realise just how much she meant them, and it proved to Jake that being without her, Amy, the woman he loved, was so much harder than he could have ever comprehended.

“You don’t have to. Tell Wunch where to stick it; Amy belongs here just as much as the rest of us.”

“Jake, you know that Holt can’t do that.”

“Why not?” He was no longer eyeing off the Captain as his attention turned to Terry. The man in question seemed just as upset as the rest of them, but it didn’t feel sincere to Jake. It didn’t feel real to him that Terry, Holt, or Rosa could even feel anything given that they were the ones packing Amy away into a box. 

“Because Wunch is right. We need this desk, Amy doesn’t; she’s gone Jake.”  
***  
The last thing he remembers is the burning rage that urged him to attack. He remembers landing a punch to Terry’s jaw and the look of sorrow and sympathy in his eyes as he rubbed at the pain. He remembers kicking the box over on his way out, sending her belongings flying. It had been an accident and he cried as he threw himself onto his knees, crawling around in order to pick them all up. Everyone was watching as he did so, but he couldn’t stop his tears, he wouldn’t stop them because they were all he had.  
***  
The case was going nowhere. 

With no leads and only circumstantial evidence, Jake found himself getting nothing from all of the files he had found on Rosa’s computer. The case she was supposedly working was incredibly flawed and Jake wondered how they had gotten a suspect out of what little evidence they had. Due to this, all he had was memory to work off of.

Trying to think back, Jake remembered Amy bringing up the case two weeks before her death. She’d mentioned the name and only talked briefly about the case before never mentioning it again. However, she and Rosa would often leave the precinct together in order to investigate their leads. The only problem for Jake was that they hadn’t documented any of this which was incredibly out of character for both women who took their paperwork seriously. 

Looking further into it all Jake discovered even more flaws, leading him to believe that there was something sinister going on. Rosa, Terry and Holt were hiding something from him and he knew this because all of their names and signatures were on the case records. 

“They’re hiding the truth from us.” He was so sure of himself as he stood before Charles and Gina who sat on his and Amy’s couch. The pair looked to each other for a brief moment, neither one knowing how to say what Jake needed to hear. It scared him to think that they wouldn’t trust him in this; that they couldn’t see what he saw. It was then that it struck him. “What if she never died? What if Amy’s still alive somewhere?” 

With this new thought process, Jake sprung back to life. Hope was all he had and in that moment the hope and belief that she was still alive was all that he needed to keep going just when he was about to give up. Charles and Gina, however, didn’t share this hope.

“Jake, Amy isn’t alive, she’s dead. She’s been gone for at least three months now and she isn’t coming back. You need to get a grip on reality, accept this and move on, that’s the last stage of grief.” Gina was blunt as usual, but for once it didn’t make him feel better. All her honesty did was make him feel even worse.  
***  
Instead of rebelling he tried to do as Gina told him. He knew he was paranoid, he knew that he wanted Amy to still be alive more than anything and he knew that he would create his own conspiracy if he’d continued down that path. He knew that it was in his best interest to pretend that he was okay, and so he did. But this didn’t keep away the crippling depression that overcame him the moment there were no longer any distractions to keep her off his mind. 

He lived like this for another four months, hiding his sadness in order to stop them all from worrying and to keep himself from going crazy. All he needed was his friends to leave him alone to deal with her death. He needed Charles to stop watching his every move and pouncing into action the moment Jake slipped up and allowed his true sadness to slip through the cracks. He needed Gina to stop noticing the way he would stare at Amy’s empty desk, hoping that he might see her sitting there again, just once. He needed Terry to stop giving him that sympathetic stare, and Rosa to tell him what was missing from those files. He needed Holt to give him closure. 

It was, however, a Tuesday afternoon when he was given the one thing he truly needed and the one thing he thought he would never have again. The elevator doors had slid open, catching no one’s attention with their mundane action, but then she stepped out, escorted by two FBI agents. Gina was the first to notice, her jaw slightly agape as her phone slipped from her loosening grasp. The smash of the screen caught everyone’s attention, leading them to follow her line of sight. Boyle had been the one to drop a coffee on himself as Rosa smirked, and Hitchcock and Scully welcomed her as if she’d simply returned after a day off work. While Amy cared for her friends, the one person she had hoped to see was Jake who was coincidentally the one person missing.

“Whoever used the last of the coffee and didn’t brew a new batch is going to pay for all the effort I just put into this.” His eyes were on Gina, who was the last to exit the break room, but her only response was a soft smile and he had never been more confused in his life. That is, until he turned to see Amy, tears of happiness in her eyes as she watched him. 

“Amy?” Jakes voice was nothing more than a broken whisper. His heart beat faster and faster as he took in the rest of the room, noticing that everyone was watching them and then noticing the two FBI agents that were talking with Holt. But it wasn’t until he heard her whisper his name back that he felt the cup of coffee slip from his grasp.

The shatter of the mug fell on deaf ears as he crossed the bullpen and wrapped her up in his arms. Her head instantly rested in the crook of his neck as her arms wrapped around his waist, allowing him to feel her tears soak into his shirt, to feel her body against his, to feel her heart beating in perfect rhythm with his own. It wasn’t until she was in his arms again that he realised how much he missed the little things. He’d missed the way her hair always smelt like coconut, the way her touch was so strong and yet so delicate at the same time. He missed every part of her, everything that she was and everything she is, and he had never felt so lucky in his life.

“Please tell me this is real. Please tell me you are actually here and I’m not dreaming. Please Amy, please don’t be a dream.” He refused to let go, even as Captain Holt emerged from his office to collect Amy. While the FBI special agents announced that Jake needed to “step back from Detective Santiago as she must debrief the operation with her Captain”, Jake and Amy refused to let go of one another. She knew how important it was to follow their orders, but this was Jake, her Jake who she had left behind for so long; her Jake who had thought she was dead for seven months, and her Jake that she never wanted to leave again. Being away from him had been the hardest thing she’d ever had to do and she never wanted to be without him again because she realised now that what she felt for him was love, pure, innocent, unadulterated love. She wanted to be with him for the rest of her life. 

“I’m not a dream Jake, I’m real, and I’m here, and I love you.”

“I love you too.”


End file.
